Well here’s some breaking news I didn’t expect this afternoon: after an NCAA investigation into impermissible benefits, Missouri’s men’s basketball program just announced a series of self-imposed penalties, including:

A one-year postseason ban for the 2015-2016 season, meaning they will NOT participate in the 2016 SEC Tournament

Vacating all its wins from the 2013-2014 season

Giving up one men’s basketball scholarship for 2015-2016 and an additional scholarship no later than the 2017-2018 season

Further restrictions on recruiting activities through 2017

Paying a $5,000 fine

What happened? According to a release from Missouri, all of the violations occurred during Frank Haith’s tenure, and included the following:

A donor gave impermissible benefits to three basketball players and one recruit from 2013-2014, including payment for work not performed during a summer internship; housing; $520 in cash; transportation, iPads, meals and the use of a local gym (Level I violation)

A second donor gave impermissible benefits to 11 players and three members of one player’s family from 2011-2014, including a “friends & family” reduced rate at a hotel as well as meals and a ride on a recreational boat (Level II violation)

A former associate head men’s basketball coach assisted in the relocation of a prospective student-athlete by providing the phone number of the prospect’s mother to a donor (Representative #2) to arrange for rental housing. (Level III violation)

Currently at 8-8 and 10th in the SEC, I doubt Missouri would have done much this postseason, but still, ouch. And all the while, Frank Haith’s still doing his thing down in Tulsa. Missouri found out about the investigation on April 14, 2014. Haith took the job at Tulsa four days later.

The penalties were self-imposed. Do you trust UofL to hold itself responsible? No, the NCAA will have to bring the hammer down. Something that should scare UNC fans, because it will be easier for the NCAA to vacate titles at two schools.

Someone doesn’t read too well. We’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars here, gifts (iPads alone are about $400 a pop), payment for work not done (which was thousands of dollars),etc, spread over multiple boosters, and including coaches, with the full knowledge of the Head Coach. There is NOTHING about this case that is similar to ULs case in any way shape or form. But keep on dreamin.

It says “payment for work not performed during a summer internship” which says that they were paid for work, and it was not a gift. The work was just not done at a summer internship. NCAA won’t let student athletes work a job. Its not “thousands and thousands”. This involved 4 players, so we’re talking a little over 2 grand at the most.

Dr. Funke – Payment for work not performed means that they were employed and didn’t actually do anything but still got a check for it. Student-athletes are allowed to have jobs, they just have to actually do work like a normal person in order to get paid.

Probably the fact that it was more of an academics problem than an athletics problem. There were plenty of students in the fake classes that weren’t athletes. Sort of out of NCAA jurisdiction. Reason why the proposed legislation for this year has a new section for academic misconduct.

RealCatsFan – It wouldn’t be an improper benefit any more, just athletes taking advantage of opportunities that were afforded to all of the students lol.

J-Dub 421 – Certainly, and that is why the NCAA is investigating it. The question will be whether the advisers knew that they were fake classes or not. Every school steers athletes to particular classes when their grades are bad, just typically those are easier classes, not classes that don’t exist.

Exactly … they take years to determine what to do with UNC even though it is already very well known that UNC cheated. Of course, like Syracuse, UNC will magically not have cheated on any years where they won a championship.

kvlt, the NCAA doesn’t care if a university commits academic fraud? Seems like that should have a bearing on a student-athlete’s academic eligibility, no? If you need a fake grade to maintain the required GPA, that’s perfectly fine so long as a non-athlete also participated in the scam? I don’t understand that kind of rationalization.

This isn’t about impermissible benefits. It’s about academic eligibility. And morality.

It’s always funny to me that teams tend to self-impose post-season bans in seasons where they are not good anyway. Off the top of my head I’m thinking Connecticut and Syracuse most recently. Seems disingenuous to self-impose a post-season ban on a team that might not be above .500 at the end of the year.

Things like this are total BS…I’m not saying Missouri should be completely off the hook (they shouldn’t), but penalizing current coaches/players for something a former coaching staff did is just flat wrong. Frank Haith was responsible for the violations at Miami AND now Missouri, and yet he’s just carrying on like normal. He should be banned from coaching for x number of years, effective immediately. Instead, the current team and coaching staff have to pay for missteps they had no hand in. Pathetic.

I don’t disagree with your stance, but from another perspective. What if a school hired a coach who cheats – then the team prospers, the school’s athletic budget prospers, the fans love it, attendance soars, merchandising sales are up, etc. When the School/NCAA find wrong doing the school blames the coach, fires the coach – who now gets a severe penalty in your scenario, and the school gets off free to go hire another coach who may or may not cheat to win. I agree the coach should have some kind of show cause to coach again, however, the school may be just a culpable with a lack of institutional control, because they have as much to gain as the coach does from unbridled success.

I’m not at all saying the school should not be held accountable…They should be. But instituting a postseason ban on players who were still in high school when the infractions took place is not the way to do it. This is all a big business and about money, so I say hit the institutions and the coaches responsible where it hurts the most: their pockets. Coach (if coaching elsewhere, such as the case for Haith) loses current position immediately, and can’t coach again for let’s say 3 years. In addition, any school hiring him after that time must show cause. The school should be required to pay fines. This way neither party is free of any issue, but the punishment isn’t placed on the shoulders of the kids.

At the end of the day, all it takes is a couple of people operating on the fringe of an athletic program doing something as simple as taking a player out on their boat for an afternoon and buying him dinner to trigger violations. Weren’t there a lot of pictures of Marshall Henderson out partying on someone’s boat a few years ago? IMO, the NCAA spends way too much time worrying about little stuff like that, and not nearly enough time on tracking down, oh, I don’t know, maybe massive decades-long academic fraud or players putting $20K in cash down on jewelry.

I am a fan of UK, and an alum of the University, which is more than can be said of 95% of the people that visit this board. However, I’m also not ignorant, and I do not make ignorant claims merely based
on my fandom. This board is UL obsessed. Drew is the main culprit and Mrs T falls in line. Then there are the people like you who make things about other schools about UL. UL UL UL. Pay attention to UK. You’ll be much happier.

This is ridiculous. With the penalty, I assumed they found a tractor at Ricky’s house and had a video tape of someone giving Butch McRae a duffle bag full of money. A one-year ban for some dang hotel discounts and three ipads? Get out of here with that jazz.